About Me

Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. Author of FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND THE SECULAR STATE (2012), HUMANITY ENHANCED (2014), and THE MYSTERY OF MORAL AUTHORITY (2016).

Friday, August 26, 2016

Hugo Awards 2016 - and, alas, a bit about the Puppies

The 2016 Hugo Awards were decided last Saturday, 20 August. Congratulations to the winners! I've taken far less interest in the awards than I did last year (in particular, for last year, see here and especially my summation here). Many people are still beating to death the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies angle on the Hugo Awards, but as far as I am concerned the "Puppies" are a spent force. Continuing to go on about them now is more like virtue signalling than making a genuine contribution to debate within the SF community. I'll say something brief and then leave it.

I wish the Puppies would go away, frankly, which hasn't happened. I previously said (see the above links): "I repeat my hope that the Sad Puppies campaign will not take place next year [i.e. in 2016], at least in anything like the same form. If it does, my attitude will definitely harden. I've been rather mild about the Sad Puppies affair compared to many others in SF fandom, and I think I can justify that, but enough is enough."

Well, the Puppies did have some influence, again, on what works were nominated: see especially items associated with Castalia House. However, that's not necessarily such a terrible thing in itself. They are entitled to champion work that they consider valuable, as others have always done.

But there was far less of a sense than last year of meretricious work getting on the ballot merely from knee-jerk, politicized Puppy support, or that high-quality work was being driven off the ballot. The exception is "Best Related Work" - which was a mess once again.

As for the outcomes, the Puppies had no real success in obtaining awards for their favourite works and authors (this was also the case last year). All in all, the form of the campaign was less virulent, this time round, and except for "Best Related Work", the consequences were less destructive.

I still say this: if the Puppies think that good work by politically conservative authors is overlooked in the Hugo process - or if they think the composition of delegates at World Science Fiction Conventions is biased against conservative authors - they need to make the case rationally (or they can organise their own conventions!). At the same time, the rest of us in the SF community can take some blame if we didn't take part in nominations or if we didn't nominate worthy titles for "Best Related Work". Plenty of good commentary and criticism related to SF was published in 2015. Why didn't enough of us nominate it?

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer(2,406 final ballots, 1922 nominating ballots)Award for the best new professional science fiction or fantasy writer of 2014 or 2015, sponsored by Dell Magazines. (Not a Hugo Award, but administered along with the Hugo Awards.)